Nerdly Painter Science Themed Art

14 h x 11 w inches, hand drawn ink on paper

Intracellular Diversion, hand drawn ink on paper, 11 x 14 inches, inquire rv@nerdlypainter.com

Notes

A little fantasy on cellular structure and function. A cell is like a little Biological factory or engine in many ways, and that is an aspect of cellular function that has always fascinated me.

Intracellular Diversion is an abstract drawing that plays with ideas in Biophysics and Biochemistry, especially ideas behind intracellular processes and structures. There are references to the overall structure of a cell (with a nucleus), to the amphiphilic molecules that comprise cell membranes, to DNA and it’s role in regulation, and to other structures and phenomena. I’ve created many actual technical diagrams over the past decades, and the “look” of scientific data and illustration inform many of my drawings and paintings.

The soft wash effects in the colored areas were created by layering marker colors on the reversed side of the drawing paper and allowing the ink to seep through. When the paper is flipped over, single marks have a soft uneven washed appearance with a faint dark line around the edges from the properties of the ink and paper fibers. In places where marker was applied more than once in layers, each pass with the marker pushes more color from the previous layers through to the other side of the paper. This property allows me to create mask effects, broken shapes and different types of contrast. When the colored portion was finished, the paper was lipped so I could work on the less saturated and more interesting side where the ink seeped or was pushed through the paper. Fine line traceries with an ultrafine tip felt tip (micron pigma 005 through 03 pens) were added. Selected colored regions were filled in with marker to create pops of saturated color.

Art marker and pigment ink on Strathmore acid free recycled content drawing paper